


Too Much is Never Enough

by nihilistic_trout



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Arguing, Bickering, Blow Jobs, Bottom Will Graham, Brief mentions of anxiety and panic attacks, Hannibal Lecter Loves Will Graham, Hannibal is being a food snob, M/M, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Post-Fall (Hannibal), Really the last half is almost all sex, Road Trips, Sex in a Car, Slightly insecure Hannibal Lecter, Spontaneous anal sex, Top Hannibal Lecter, Unrealistic Sex, Unresolved Issues, Will Graham Loves Hannibal Lecter, Will Graham has had enough
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:40:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27091405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nihilistic_trout/pseuds/nihilistic_trout
Summary: After mostly recovering from their injuries, Will and Hannibal head for Mexico. Unfortunately, that means they're stuck in a car together. Alone. And they have to sort through some of their shit. God help them.
Relationships: Will Graham & Hannibal Lecter, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 35
Kudos: 338





	Too Much is Never Enough

Once they were certain that the threat of medical emergency had passed, they dropped Chiyoh at a bus depot in Kansas City and continued heading south and west.

The three of them together had made for a more conspicuous traveling group than Will had been comfortable with. Nothing about Chiyoh had made it onto any of the news outlets that Hannibal tracked on his burner phone, and even Freddie Lounds -- who ironically enough was probably their best warning system for any information Jack didn't want to be released to the press -- made no mention of an accomplice in any of her articles. So, either the FBI knew nothing about Chiyoh, in which case she risked exposure every day she spent with them, or they did know and were keeping it quiet, which meant they were more likely to get caught if they stayed together. In either case, they had agreed that it was best to part ways before they got anywhere near the border to Mexico.

That turned out to be a mistake. Will didn't fully appreciate the buffer that Chiyoh had provided until she was gone. Relatively certain that she hadn't made it onto the international watch lists with them, Chiyoh had been able to take care of certain things that were far more dangerous for Will or Hannibal to do directly. Without her, checking into hotels became a gamble, and something as simple as pumping gas or pulling into a late-night drive-through turned into a game of Russian roulette with Will's frayed nerves playing the part of the bullet. 

But that wasn't even the worst of it. As twitchy as Will was with constant dread sitting cold and heavy in his stomach, he had dealt with such things for most of his life. He was the patron Saint of waking from nightmares literally drenched in sweat, after all; he could handle his nerves being stretched to the breaking point for a while longer. What he  _ couldn't  _ handle was Hannibal being hell-bent on snapping at every single one of those nerves like a goddamn rubberband.

They had their first real fight in Denver less than twelve hours after parting ways with Chiyoh. Not a good sign, surely. Will couldn't even remember what had started it. But it had ended with a very serious threat to shove a Taco Bell quesadilla down Hannibal's throat before Will had pulled the car off the interstate, into an industrial park, and left it and Hannibal sitting there for a good quarter of an hour while he cleared his head and kicked petulantly at the corrugated side of a shipping container until his toes throbbed. 

They had slept in the car that night. It had been a bad decision where their injuries were concerned, but Will had been too tightly wound to approach even the shadiest motel check-in desk and he still didn’t want to risk Hannibal doing it; he was too recognizable even without his fancy suits, and he apparently couldn't shed his overly-cultured pretentious prick routine to save his life. Hannibal had stood out even in a place like Florence. In middle America, he was practically a homing beacon for a satellite-guided missile. 

The rest of the trip through Colorado passed in subdued silence. They entered New Mexico briefly and Will found distraction in the mountains, but by the time they hit north Texas, he was ready to shove Hannibal out into the vast expanse of nothingness and be done with it. Will could turn around and head for Canada, hunker down in a yurt with a few dogs, and wait for Jack to hunt him down. At least his final months of freedom would be peaceful and quiet. 

Looking back, Will should have seen it coming. Hannibal surprised him with his adaptability to using the restrooms in trucker populated travel plazas and sleeping in motel rooms where the mortar had started to crumble out of the cinderblock walls and cold morning light slipped in through the cracks to wake them. But for all Hannibal’s willingness to forgo the usual comforts and refinements in nearly every other aspect of his life, at least for the time being, there was always one sticking point. There had  _ always _ been and always would be one sticking point.

Of  _ course, _ hell finally broke loose over a fucking breakfast sandwich. 

After creeping out of their Lubbock hotel room at five in the morning so they could be gone before the day shift arrived, Will pulled off in Amarillo for something to eat. He bypassed several McDonald's -- as amusing as that had been the first time, he wasn't in the mood for a repeat of Hannibal's silent treatment -- and chose an old brick house that had been converted into a coffee shop on the outskirts of what he thought was supposed to be the downtown area.

He parked the car around the corner and left the keys in the ignition, Hannibal in the passenger seat, and approached the restaurant with his baseball cap pulled low. It was still too early and the sun hadn’t risen enough to justify wearing his sunglasses, but thankfully, that worked somewhat in his favor. Most people still hadn’t left for work and he only had to pass one other person, an older woman walking her dog, to get to the door. Minimal contact was essential in the art of disappearing, Hannibal kept reminding him. Like trying to contain the spread of disease. 

Inside, the aroma of fresh coffee and slightly overcooked eggs wafted through the air and a small, crackly stereo played from somewhere around the register. Only two customers stood ahead of him at the counter and two employees worked behind it. The whole thing was so normal it almost felt surreal.

Will slipped into place at the back of the line and pulled his own burner out of his pocket. The battery was running low but he opened the news app anyway and scrolled through the headlines. It didn't take long to find what he was looking for:  _ Nationwide Manhunt for Cannibalistic Serial Killer Doctor Hannibal Lecter Still Underway.  _

The line moved and Will shuffled forward a few steps. He skimmed the article but found nothing new. Another recounting of Hannibal’s crimes and convictions, a glossed over history of his time with the FBI (the most embarrassing bits had been left out), and vague nods to what law enforcement was doing to offer some reassurance to the public. Something at the bottom of the article caught his eye and he slowed down, reading carefully. 

_ Former FBI Special Agent Will Graham, who has been listed as a person of interest in the events surrounding Lecter’s escape, is still unaccounted for. Though he is believed to be traveling with Lecter, no further details regarding his involvement have been shared with the press. Agent Jack Crawford made a statement yesterday afternoon regarding Graham’s complicated history with Lecter and emphasized that Graham is, at the moment, only wanted for questioning. _ ****

Will darkened his screen and shook his head, and returned the phone to his back pocket. _Person of interest_. Jack should know better. Jack  _ did  _ know better. The FBI had found Hannibal’s safehouse weeks ago. Even if they were still combing through it, all the evidence Jack would ever need had been right there in the open. Will had gone to that house of his own volition, had killed Dolarhyde, had dragged Hannibal’s limp body up onto the beach after the ocean had ripped the momentary thought of suicide out of his head and replaced it with a vicious, terrifying will to live. 

Before that, he’d negotiated Hannibal’s escape under the guise of a setup, kept secrets, lied, hand-delivered Chilton right into the Dragon’s maw, gone to Hannibal as if he’d ever needed his help,  _ fucking returned in the first place.  _ Where the pivot point lay in the middle of all of that, he still didn’t know, but it hardly mattered. He’d meant it when he had told Bedelia that decisions were more often a lump than a sum. At some point, Will had moved far enough into the maelstrom that turning back wouldn’t have helped -- he’d only have been approaching the same destination from a different direction. Maybe that was all he’d ever been doing anyway. 

Either way, Hannibal was his center now, and no amount of Jack Crawford waiting and hoping to be proven wrong was going to change that.

Will didn’t want it to.

The man in front of him paid and stepped off to the side, and Will quickly schooled his expression into something friendly and forgettable and moved forward. 

The girl behind the counter flashed him a customer-service smile. “Good morning. What can I get for you?”

Will glanced over the menu. None of it jumped out at him as being particularly Hannibal-friendly, but then again, nothing was going to really satisfy Hannibal until they got somewhere safe and he was healed enough to hunt for his meals. Until then, he was going to have to make do and he was going to shut up about it, or God as his witness, Will  _ would _ kill him. Roll his corpse out into the desert for the coyotes and the buzzards. After all of Hannibal’s brushes with what he might have considered an artistic death (or at least an acceptably ironic one), he’d wind up as nothing more than some crusty animal scat out in the middle of fuck know’s where.

_ This is my design.  _

Will swiped his hand over his mouth to smother a convulsive little smile and shook himself. God, he needed a vacation.

He ordered two coffees and two bagel breakfast sandwiches to go and was fishing a wad of cash out of his wallet when the song on the radio ended and the news cycle came on with a crack of static. Will forced his body to remain in motion and kept his expression easy as he passed a twenty to the cashier and listened to the traffic report, the local weather, and some update on a story out of Austin about an embezzlement ring. 

He took his change and stepped to the side, put his back to one of the windows with the garish early morning sunlight pouring in over his shoulder, and then yanked his phone back out so he had a reason for keeping his head down. 

A stock track played, one of those obnoxious computer-generated ones that screamed ‘news update’ and then a new voice, authoritative and professionally urgent, took over.

“ _ Federal authorities are still working around the clock to locate escaped fugitive Doctor Hannibal Lecter, better known as Hannibal the Cannibal, who escaped federal custody nearly four weeks ago after a routine prison transfer was ambushed by unknown accomplices, resulting in the deaths of six federal agents.  _

_ “FBI Agent Jack Crawford held a press conference yesterday afternoon in which he acknowledged the high likelihood that Lecter has already made it out of the country. The Federal Investigation Bureau has established connections with law enforcement agencies around the world to facilitate a cooperative international hunt, but domestic border security has been told to remain on high alert. _

_ “Anyone with knowledge of Lecter’s whereabouts is encouraged to call into the FBI hotline. A reward of $100,000 has been offered for any information leading to Lecter’s apprehension.” _

“My sister was in Baltimore when that happened,” the man beside Will said to no one in particular. Will barely managed not to jump out of his skin at the sound of his voice. “Almost drove all the way out there to pick her up and bring her back myself.”

The barista shook her head and passed a cup of coffee and a small pastry bag to the first customer over the counter. The woman took it with a distracted thanks and left. 

“Didn’t he kill, like, sixty people?” the barista asked.

“Sixty-two  _ confirmed _ ,” the man said with a sneer. “Those sick fuckers always have bodies that they never tell anyone about.”

“How does anyone kill  _ sixty-two _ people and no one catches on?” 

Will swallowed down another spike of stupid, panicked amusement. God, if only they knew.

“No idea,” the man said. “Apparently he’s really smart. Knows how to cover his tracks. It’s been four weeks. If they haven’t caught him by now, I’m guessing they missed their window.”

The barista shrugged and set the man’s order down on the counter for him. “You never know. Didn’t they catch some guy a few years ago because someone recognized him in France or something? And he’d been in hiding for a lot longer.”

“Yeah, maybe. Here’s to hoping.” The man took his coffee with a nod of thanks and then turned for the door. His eyes passed briefly over Will and that single second of impassive, unaware attention felt like a lifetime. No recognition filtered into his expression, and he left without saying a word, but Will still felt like he’d been turned inside out and disassembled.

It took everything in him not to snatch his order off the counter when it came and dash out the door. His mind spun with the irrational but nagging fear that he was going to get back to the car only to find a cavalcade of police cruisers barricading them in and Hannibal slammed over the hood with his hands behind his back. When Will turned onto the quiet street, it did nothing to relieve the anxiety, and the familiar, unwelcome beginnings of a panic attack bristled at the back of his skull.

He opened the driver’s side door and tossed the bag of sandwiches into Hannibal’s lap, before passing him the coffee and dropping heavily into the seat. He slammed the door shut, squeezed his eyes closed, and curled his fingers around the steering wheel, forcing himself to breathe.

“Will?” There was genuine concern in Hannibal’s voice. It grated on Will’s nerves and he had to clench his teeth together to keep from snapping at him. “Did something happen?”

“No. I don’t know.” He scrubbed his hands over his face and dragged in another deep breath. “No. It’s fine. We’re fine.”

“Would you like me to drive?” Hannibal moderated his tone back to something neutral. He always had been able to read a room.

Will paused. That wasn’t a bad idea, probably. He’d hardly relinquished the wheel since they had left their isolated little hideout in Ohio and whatever force had kept him going so far was starting to drain from him. He felt like his bones were sliding out of his body.

“I’m fine,” he said. “Just… eat.”

He started the car and didn’t breathe normally again until Amarillo was nothing more than rooflines and billboards in the rearview mirror. They were fine. Everything was fine. Except that it wasn’t because this was going to be their reality, in some form or other, for the rest of their lives. And he had known that. From the moment he had walked into that ridiculous suite of a cell and stared at Hannibal Lecter through the glass, he had known, but it was suddenly all too much. 

How long before some hapless stranger recognized Hannibal standing in line at a grocery store, or sipping a cappuccino outside of a cafe in whatever city he finally managed to wrangle Will into? How many times were they going to have to drop everything and run before then? The close calls, the uncertainty, the sheer  _ suggestion  _ of letting Hannibal out of his sight for any longer than a few minutes pushed thistled anxiety into Will’s head and tore at the protective shield of momentum and focus that he’d been using to keep himself together. Will didn’t care about being safe _ \-- _ he’d given that up the moment his decision lump had morphed into the all-too recognizable shape of Hannibal--but he  _ did _ care about maintaining his sanity and it seemed his was finally starting to peel away.

He glanced at Hannibal. They hadn’t spoken since leaving Amarillo, Hannibal apparently having sensed that it was better to give Will his space. It was something he had been uncharacteristically careful about lately. He sat quiet and content with his face turned towards the window and his coffee held loosely in one hand, propped on his knee. The unopened bag of sandwiches had been moved to the floor between his feet and a hot wire of fury stretched through Will at the sight of it. 

“Are you going to eat?”

Hannibal's gaze drifted towards the paper bag on the floor, pulled up toward Will, but didn’t make it all the way to either before he looked back out the window. "Perhaps later."

Will pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth to keep himself from grinding his teeth together.

"Why do you let me buy things for you if you're not going to eat them?"

Hannibal ran his finger around the rim of the compostable coffee cup and answered with a little too much levity. "My system is not accustomed to a road trip diet. I did not wish to hinder our progress with frequent rest stops."

"Oh, our progress is what you're worried about,” Will bit out. “Just taking care of our ETA, is that it?"

Hannibal finally shifted in his seat to look at him. “Is there something you would like to talk about, Will?"

"Nope. I'm good." 

They lapsed back into tense silence for a few minutes. Will stared hard at the bland grey pavement ahead. Gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. Shook his head. 

"You've been on a prison diet for the last three years,” he said. “ _ And  _ you swallowed a raw chunk of Dolarhyde's throat. I think your system can handle some subpar eggs and bacon on a bagel."

Hannibal sighed softly. "I’ve upset you." 

Will made a derisive noise in the back of his throat. “Think so?”

“I think that my diet is not what is truly bothering you.”

“No, no, I'm legitimately annoyed at you about it. I did not drag your ass off that beach, risk my life getting you the treatment you needed, and abandon everything so you could starve yourself like some picky child. Eat the damn sandwich, Hannibal.”

Hannibal said nothing. He drummed his fingers against the armrest, head canted slightly to one side in thought. Then, with a jilted movement as if he were being forced to pick up dog shit with his bare hands, he reached down between his feet and plucked the bag off the floor. The sandwiches had been sitting in it for so long that blotchy grease stains had leaked through, making it look like some messed up version of a Rorschach. Hannibal paused, clearly not wanting to place it in his lap before he apparently remembered that he was wearing a thirty-five dollar pair of jeans and not two-thousand dollar Armani slacks. Reluctantly, he balanced it on his knees long enough to pull the paper-wrapped sandwiches out and offered one to Will.

Will glared at it. The anxiety still rolling around in his gut had all but killed his appetite and  _ he  _ wasn’t the one who had been refusing to eat anything for the past several days. But he snatched it anyway, unwrapped it and, in the interest of at least trying to guilt Hannibal into joining him, tore off a bite and forced himself to swallow. It probably wouldn’t have been half-bad as far as coffee-house breakfast sandwiches went, but it had been sitting beneath the heater for long enough that the bagel and eggs gummed together in his mouth and slid down his throat like a wad of cold tar. He suppressed a grimace as best he could, washed it down with a mouthful of lukewarm coffee, and took another bite, more out of spite than anything else. 

Hannibal watched him for a long moment, during which Will adamantly refused to acknowledge him, and then, finally, Hannibal tore off a piece of the bagel and nibbled at the inside. 

“What happened in the cafe, Will?”

Will groaned. “Jesus Christ, Hannibal, nothing happened. Nothing happened, okay? I’m just sick of food going to waste because apparently you can eat a man’s kidney but God forbid that you debase yourself for a fucking sandwich while we literally flee for our lives.”

“That certainly warrants a fair amount of irritation,” Hannibal said. “But you seem to have elevated things beyond that.”

Will shot him a quick, dirty look. “Are you saying that  _ I  _ don’t understand why  _ I’m  _ mad at you?”

“I am  _ suggesting _ that you occasionally display the emotional literacy of an adolescent and it’s possible that...”

Will sputtered. “I'm sorry, I...  _ I _ do? You can't process anything you feel without trying to kill and eat the source of it first.”

Hannibal pressed his lips into a thin line. “I disagree.”

“You disagree. Of course you disagree. What was this, then?” Will thrust his finger at the jagged scar across his forehead. “Huh? What was that?”

“I do not wish to rehash old…”

“Goddamn cannibal temper tantrum, that's what it was. And while we're on the topic of Italy…”

“I made no mention of Italy.”

_ “I  _ did. And while we're on it, don't you dare tell me I don’t know how to handle my shit when you rebounded with fucking Bedelia for eight months. I don't want to hear it.”

“My marriage to Bedelia was a parody in which we both chose to participate. I had intended to eat her at the end of it.” Hannibal ran his hands down the front of his shirt, fingers twitching at the absence of lapels to smooth or buttons to fiddle with. He frowned down at his Target-bought sweater for a moment and then, with a fitful shrug, laced his fingers together over his knee and turned to Will. “What were your final intentions with your stand-ins?”

Will’s mouth hung open in stunned silence.  _ Oh, you have got to be shitting me.  _ Hannibal had  _ not  _ just said that.

“Did you seriously just try to take the moral high ground with that?” he asked.

“No. Not the moral high ground…”

“Because you fake marry a woman to eat her, and I  _ actually _ marry someone to try to have a normal fucking life, and  _ I’m  _ the one who’s messed up?”

Hannibal spread his hands placatingly. Will had a sudden, savage desire to break his fingers. “I am merely illustrating the differences in our levels of self-awareness. There is no need to be defensive.”

“You say I'm not self-aware and think that I shouldn’t take offense to that?”

“I think you can be impulsive and sometimes that leads to inconsistencies in your behavior.”

“Right,” Will snapped. “Because you’ve been so goddamn consistent. You asked me to run away with you, gutted me for breaking your heart, forgave me, then changed your mind and tried to eat my brain. You want to explain your consistent and rational thought process on that one?”

“A series of events admittedly guided more by the unexpected severity of my feelings for you than any coherent logic,” Hannibal said. It  _ almost  _ sounded like an apology but wasn’t one. He lifted one shoulder in a small shrug. “It was out of my system by the time we reached Muskrat Farms.”

“I’m sure it was,” Will muttered. He raked a hand back through his hair and tilted his head back as far as he could without taking his eyes off the road. “Why are we fighting about this  _ now _ ?”

“To be frank, I’m at a loss as to what exactly we  _ are  _ fighting about,” Hannibal said. “But you did bring it up.”

“I brought it up because you’re being a massive pain in my ass and have no regard for how much I’ve…” Will cut himself off with a bite to the inside of his cheek. He took a deep breath and then another, until the urge to drive them both into the ditch subsided. “Let’s just… I don’t have the energy to do this right now.”

“Very well,” Hannibal said but he was still looking at him, expression inscrutable, and Will could practically feel Hannibal’s compulsive need to have the last word poking holes in the air between them. 

_ Don’t do it,  _ Will thought at him.  _ Don’t you fucking do it.  _

“I never wanted to cause you unnecessary pain, Will.”

_ There it is. _

Will breathed out a dark laugh. Not exactly what he had been expecting but maybe not that surprising either, all things considered. It had taken Will a long time to understand that Hannibal was actually  _ sincere  _ in that sentiment. The flipside, of course, was that he felt no shame or regret about the perceived _ necessary _ pain he had caused, a consequentialist to his core. 

The truly frightening thing, though, was that Will wasn’t even mad at him for it anymore. Not really. There would always be a jagged obsidian center to their relationship that had been birthed from all the betrayal and resentment but at the end of it all, that went both ways. No one could ever say that Will hadn’t given exactly as good as he’d got. Maybe worse where Hannibal’s heart was concerned. 

“Are we going to bitch at each other until one of us finally snaps?” he asked. “Is that how this is going to work?”

“I have no desire to end your life, Will,” Hannibal said. “But you know that. Whatever else you may have suffered at my hands, I have not sought to fully obscure my intentions from you for quite some time.”

Will opened his mouth to shoot back some half thought out retaliation but something in Hannibal’s voice made him hesitate. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Hannibal looked down at his hands. Then at his jeans. His sweater. None of it his, none of it  _ him,  _ and it occurred to Will, absurdly, for the first time, that while he had come out of the Atlantic with a firm understanding of where he stood and would stand for the rest of his life, perhaps he was alone in that stability. Hannibal had always been infuriatingly sure of himself. But over the last four weeks, he had followed Will’s direction more than he had led, responded more than he had acted, and maintained a distance that was starting to feel more barbed than Will had realized.

“If you require a thorough explanation, perhaps we need to reassess our decisions up to this point,” Hannibal said flatly.

Something cold and sharp slithered into place at the base of Will’s ribcage. He could count on one hand the number of times he’d come across one of Hannibal’s fracture lines. There weren’t many and they were very carefully guarded but there was one now, exposed and vibrating, freshly struck. 

Or maybe not so freshly struck. 

Will slammed on the brakes. The tires squealed on the pavement and a plume of smoke rose up behind them, the acrid stench of burnt rubber wafting in through the heater vents. With a quick glance in the rearview mirror to make sure no one was coming--thank God for sparse Texas traffic--Will threw the car into reverse and backed up to the exit lane they had just passed, turned onto it, and left the highway. __

There were no trees, no hills, so Will drove until the few cars on the road behind them were little more than glints of light in the rising sun and then he pulled onto the shoulder and parked. Hannibal watched him the whole way in silent, wary curiosity. Considering their history, he was probably prepared for Will to tackle him out into the dirt and cut him open to stain the desert red. The thought crossed Will’s mind. He’d look gorgeous and naked out there in all that harsh sunlight, rib cage split and spread and staked down, spilled bowels and pulsing heart the only shocks of color in that barren, empty landscape. 

Will wasn’t sure which of them he surprised more when he yanked Hannibal close by the front of his clearance rack sweater and kissed him instead. 

If they’d had more time, if they were safe behind walls and doors and locks and pulled curtains, if Will hadn’t felt ready to vibrate apart from the fitful energy clawing at the backs of his teeth, he might have taken the time to soothe the uncertainty that filtered into his head. It didn’t belong to him and perhaps it deserved some attention.

But they didn’t have time. They were sitting in an idling car on the shoulder of a county road in Texas where anyone could drive by at any moment and stop to see if they needed help, and if Will didn’t have this man right now, in some way or other, he was going to lose his fucking mind.

Unhooking his seatbelt, Will reached beneath the passenger seat and groped around until his fingers caught on the narrow metal bar there. With a sharp pull and a shove, he slid the seat back as far as it would go. Hannibal barely had time to release his own seatbelt before Will scrambled over the center console and into his lap, banging his knee on the gear shift as he went. 

Then he was kissing Hannibal again. He knotted his fingers in soft greying hair -- a little longer now than it had been in the hospital -- and jerked Hannibal’s head back to plunge his tongue into that warm, deceptive mouth, taking before Hannibal had the chance to give, greedy for the taste of him. 

“You’re such a fucking idiot,” Will muttered, nipping at Hannibal’s bottom lip for emphasis. 

Hannibal remained stiff and unresponsive against him but that only lasted for a moment. If there was one thing Hannibal Lecter  _ wasn’t _ good at, it was complete and total self-restraint. From the moment they had met, Hannibal had enjoyed pushing every boundary he could possibly find. It was part of his nature to walk right up to the proverbial edge and taunt gravity. Will used that, pulled on that instinct until Hannibal shuddered beneath him and slid one hand up Will’s chest to curl his fingers around the base of his throat, ready to grab or push or strangle or break as needed. His other hand dropped down to fumble around blindly at the side of his seat. It took Will a second to figure out what the hell he was doing before Hannibal’s body tensed and he pressed back. Nothing happened. Hannibal pushed again, with a little more force, and he huffed out a frustrated noise against Will’s mouth when the seat refused to budge. 

Will broke away and frowned. “Is it stuck?”

Hannibal gave one more experimental shove against the seat-back and then nodded, amusement warring with profound irritation over his features. “I believe so.”

Snickering, Will braced his hands on the seat behind Hannibal’s shoulders and nodded. “Pull on it again.”

Hannibal did so, and with a sharp snap of his body, Will threw his weight against it. Nothing. He did it again. And again. Somewhere beneath them, a spring popped and the seat-back dropped with a jarring lurch. They fell back with it. Will narrowly avoided smashing his forehead into Hannibal’s nose. 

He laughed. Whether it was real amusement or the sudden, all-at-once discharge of everything he had been fighting against for months and even years, he had no idea, but he pushed the sound into Hannibal’s mouth and then sat up to shuck his jacket off his shoulders.

"Feel like I'm sixteen again," he said and rolled his hips forward to tease against the hardening line of Hannibal’s cock.

Will’s jacket caught on his elbows and Hannibal snatched at it with a ferocity that had barely shown itself since the cliffs. The sight of the monster,  _ his  _ monster, straining against the finely tailored seams of Hannibal’s person-suit punched dark arousal deep into Will’s stomach, and he tilted further forward, found a position with friction and rhythm, and ground against him.

"Is this something you did with frequency when you were sixteen?" Hannibal asked. He pushed his hands up over Will’s stomach and chest, fingers curled, nails scraping bluntly through the thin cotton of his t-shirt. There was an edge to his voice as if the thought of anyone else touching Will like this wasn’t only unbearable but unacceptable entirely.

Will fumbled with the cheap faux-leather belt looped through Hannibal’s jeans. He considered it a point of payback from the universe that he didn’t have to contend with a three-piece suit; silver linings did exist. 

"No,” he said honestly. “Just always felt like I was supposed to."

"The predilection for following a prescribed script took root in you early on, then." Hannibal sounded oddly amused by that, but Will was rapidly losing the patience and the higher cognitive functions normally required to understand Hannibal’s particular sense of humor.

Will ripped the belt free and yanked at the zipper with much more force than was strictly necessary, intentionally letting his thumbnail scrape across Hannibal through the fabric of his underwear. Hannibal groaned quietly and shifted beneath him in search of more contact. 

"You gonna keep psycho-analyzing me while I try to get your pants off or are you going to participate?" 

Hannibal laughed and reached up to touch Will’s cheek. "Forgive me, darling. Force of habit."

Will rolled his eyes, bent down, and kissed him again, because he wanted to and because he didn’t quite trust Hannibal to shut up if left to his own devices. 

Getting their clothes off went about as smoothly as could be expected. Will had to step all the way out of the car to work his jeans and boxers over his hips and down his legs before climbing back in and kicking them onto the floorboard, while Hannibal was apparently content to push his own down to his knees and leave them there. When Will straddled him again, Hannibal caught a handful of his hair and jerked him down into another bruising kiss, possessive and eager. Will moaned softly into it.

It must have been that small show of surrender that did it. Suddenly, Hannibal was everywhere. His hands roamed and clawed at Will like some starved creature, squeezing at his thighs, raking down his back, pulling and grasping and digging in deep to mark. Their kiss flared with Hannibal’s heat, turned frantic and messy, almost uncoordinated, teeth catching at lips and tongue. Hannibal dragged the breath out of Will’s lungs and into his own, then gave it back, the vacuum seal between them broken at last.

There had been times, intermittently in the past, when Will had wondered whether he ever would have been enough to fill Hannibal. At the heart of all the rejections and the apprehensions and the never-ending mind games had been one constant fear: if he gave in, he would be devoured in his entirety and Hannibal would still be left wanting. But this didn’t feel like consumption. It felt like  _ liberation.  _

Will surged into him with all the fury and mercilessness of a flood. He ripped through the scream-filled corridors of Hannibal’s precious memory palace, found every gaping void beneath floorboards and in the rafters, and poured himself into each and every one, and when they were filled, he kept coming still, until the walls bloated outwards and the foundations sank and the roof swelled with Will’s very presence. 

Hannibal drank him in without reservation, and when he couldn’t hold anymore, he willingly slipped beneath the waters and let Will crash into his lungs, his bowels, his very marrow. Too much. That was what he was. Will had always been too much for any one person to survive all of him; those who had tried had drowned. Hannibal was no exception. The difference was that he  _ wanted  _ Will to drown him.

So Will did. He broke away from the kiss and scraped his teeth along Hannibal’s jaw, down his throat, found the place where his pulse beat rapidly beneath damp skin, and bit down. Hannibal snarled in his ear. He curled his fingers against Will’s scalp and arched into his mouth until skin broke and blood trickled over Will’s tongue, hot and metallic. 

A low groan of heartfelt relief rumbled through Hannibal’s chest. His hips stuttered for a moment, and when he found his rhythm again, he rutted up against Will so hard that Will had to grip the headrest to maintain his balance.

Licking and sucking at the small wound on Hannibal’s neck, Will blindly flipped open the center console and rummaged beneath the stack of napkins, searching for… there. He pulled out the little packet of olive oil dressing for a salad that had gone mostly uneaten and pressed it into Hannibal's hand. Will couldn't even really be mad at him for that one. Should have known better than to buy a salad for the cannibal.

Hannibal’s movements didn’t stop but he slowed and loosened his grip on Will enough to inspect the offering before he let out a delighted huff of laughter. "This is not the flavor profile I would have chosen for you.”

Will grinned, let Hannibal feel it against his skin, and licked a line up to his ear. "Beggars being choosers and all that, I suggest you take what we have."

He didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, he claimed Hannibal’s mouth again and gave himself up to the hot slide of their tongues, caught Hannibal’s bottom lip between his teeth, and kneaded it until a small bead of blood welled to the surface. 

He hardly heard the rip of the small package, but he did register Hannibal’s finger circling around his rim before pressing resolutely inwards, too soon and too fast, and it stung. Will sank back against it with a needy whine and pushed his hands beneath Hannibal’s sweater, clawed welts up the length of his torso from naval to collar bones, and cycled the pain back into him. This was their exchange. If Will was the cold, turbulent depths of the ocean, everything about Hannibal was heat and vicious, mutating pressure. They should have destroyed one another and instead, they merged in violent eruptive confluences of light and motion. The very heart of creation itself. 

Hannibal opened Will with feverish efficiency. He worked in a second finger and then a third, scissoring to stretch him open, drawing away to suck dark bruises into Will’s neck, nosing at his cheek until Will gave him his mouth again. 

Will didn’t wait for the pain of the stretch to subside. Whether the desperation was his own or Hannibal’s or some combination of them both, it didn’t matter. He reached back and snatched Hannibal’s hand away with a low, demanding growl. Hannibal responded in kind, bared his teeth, and quickly slicked his own cock while Will repositioned. As soon as Will felt that first hint of blunt pressure against his hole, he drove himself down to claim. 

It hurt like hell. God, did it hurt. They had gone too fast with not nearly enough preparation and nothing but olive oil salad dressing out of a foil packet to slick the way. 

A hysterical bit of laughter bubbled up out of Will's chest, which was probably the sanest emotional reaction he'd had since he had walked into that damn mental hospital almost two months ago. Maybe before that. Hell, maybe it was the sanest thing he'd ever felt where Hannibal was concerned.

"Do you need a moment?" Hannibal's voice was heavy and thick and it pulled Will back to himself.

He opened his eyes, looked up, registered concern somewhere around the edges of that smug smirk. 

"I'm good," he said. "Just need… Fuck, one second."

Bracing himself on Hannibal’s shoulders, Will tilted his hips and fucked down onto him until, with an alarming give of muscle, his ass settled against Hannibal’s thighs, split open and aching. 

Okay. Maybe he  _ did _ need a minute.

Leaning forward, he rested his head on Hannibal’s shoulder and pressed his face into the warmth of Hannibal’s throat. When it became obvious that Will had no intention of moving right away, Hannibal relaxed the bruising grip he had on Will’s hips and stroked one hand up his spine to cradle the back of his neck. It reminded Will of the way Hannibal had held him on that night in Baltimore, with Will’s blood running hot between them. At the time, he’d taken it for vengeance, but it had been more than that, a desperate attempt to sever their connection before Will got too close or had the chance to work his way in too deeply. He wondered if either of them had realized, in some hidden corner of themselves, that it had been too late for that even then. 

When the burn receded a little, Will lifted his head. He pressed hot, open-mouthed kisses to Hannibal’s jaw and cheek, then shifted to see his face.

"Are you okay?" He brushed his hand over Hannibal’s stomach, across the fresh, pink scar tissue stitching him together. 

Something wistful drifted across Hannibal’s features. His fingers wandered over the jut of Will’s hip, past his dripping cock, and lightly skimmed over the old puckered scar beneath Will’s naval. Then he looked up and smiled.

“I would be better if you were moving,” he said, and there was so much of Hannibal’s usual playfulness in the words that Will grinned and rocked carefully down onto his lap. 

The olive oil wasn’t quite enough to ease the friction of Hannibal’s cock inside him. Every thrust dragged along Will’s insides and tugged at his rim. It felt fucking divine.

“If that reopens,” he said, pressing his fingertips to Hannibal’s side, “Chiyoh is going to kill us both.”

“Mm. I’ll tell her that it was your doing.”

Will snorted. “You guys can put me in a nice bisque to teach me a lesson.”

Hannibal’s grin stretched into something wide and feral. “Something a little more refined for you, I think. And  _ Italian _ ."

Will laughed, kissed him, gripped Hannibal's hair, and pulled.

They found their rhythm, then, a harsh, relentless pace that kept Hannibal deep inside Will, thick and excessive and wild. Will braced his hands against Hannibal’s chest and rode him with a single-minded determination to feel and to give and to take. A deep ache throbbed outwards from Will’s shoulder and the scar on his cheek felt pulled tight and frayed, but it was all just another line in the symphony of their becoming.  _ Their  _ becoming. Together they would rip the world apart, set it on fire and make it weep. 

Hannibal curled his hands around Will’s thighs and grabbed his ass to spread him open, hefting him up slightly to push into him at a new angle. His next thrust curled straight up Will’s spine and unfurled in the back of his skull.

"Oh  _ fuck _ ."

Hannibal’s gaze darted to Will’s face and the corners of his mouth twitched into a smile that wasn’t quite a smile, cocky and certain. "There?"

Will nodded and dropped his head back. "Yeah, yeah, there, that's… that's good, that's… fuck, Hannibal, don't stop."

"Never." It sounded like a prayer or an oath, reverent and weighted and tinged with just the slightest bit of apologetic warning. 

Will nodded his understanding and dragged his hand down Hannibal’s chest in lieu of reassurance. It had been three years since Hannibal had felt the touch of anyone who wasn't shoving him into a straight jacket, but he had been starved of Will for much longer than that.  _ Will  _ had starved him, forced him to feed on scraps and the grey dimming light of memory, the more painful hollowness of wasted possibility. But no more. 

Ignoring the discomfort in his hips, Will folded forward, pressed their foreheads together, and caught Hannibal’s gaze with his own. 

“I am your reality now,” Will whispered. He didn’t realize the words were there until he spoke them but he felt the truth of them, sacred and absolute. 

Hannibal's rhythm faltered. His fingers flexed against Will’s hips, nails biting into his skin as he slammed up into him, frantic and reckless. Will didn’t look away, couldn’t have even if the FBI surrounded them at that moment and Jack Crawford walked up to tap impatiently on the window, and Freddie Lounds sky jumped out of a helicopter with her camera already trained on them.

More laughter. Hannibal’s eyes fluttered open, heavy and glazed over, his pupils blown out wide to swallow the whisky brown of his irises. He regarded Will with a bemused expression.

“Should I be flattered or offended?” he asked.

Will shook his head and fucked back against Hannibal hard. The wet sounds of their bodies colliding were obscenely loud in the confined space. “Just… ah... just coming to an understanding with myself.”

Hannibal hummed and slid one hand around Will’s ass to trace his fingers around the stretched outside of his rim. “May I ask what about?” 

Will hissed at him. He grasped at Hannibal’s sweater, lifted him slightly from the seat, and slammed him back down onto it, fingers biting into his shoulders. “I’m going to hollow you out and wear your bones like a coat. You’re  _ mine _ .”

The look that crossed Hannibal’s face at that was one of pure ecstasy and adoration. He broke, releasing a ragged snarl against Will’s mouth and gripping Will’s hips to bodily slam him down onto his cock. Will grunted, struggled to meet Hannibal’s frenetic pace, and eventually gave himself up to being bounced and used. His mind nattered at him, half delirious with pleasure, that this was Hannibal still recovering from life-threatening injuries. Imagine what he would be like whole and hale, all that primal strength bearing down on Will with singular intent. He let out a sound perilously close to a giggle and couldn’t make himself care in the slightest. 

With one final brutal snap of his hips, Hannibal came hard inside him, his teeth cutting into the curve of Will’s neck. Turning his head as much as he was able, Will pressed kisses into Hannibal’s hair and managed to wedge an arm beneath his shoulders to hold him through it, rocking his body and clenching around him until Hannibal convulsed.

Boneless and chest heaving, Hannibal slumped down into the seat, but Will had no intention of letting him rest. He drove his hips down hard and whined. Dark eyes slitted open and took him in. Then Hannibal slid down in the seat a little way and nudged gently at the undersides of Will’s thighs.

“Come here,” he said. 

His tone left no room for argument and Will didn’t even try, too desperate to consider the logistics before he fumbled his way up and over Hannibal to brace his arms on the backseat, knees planted to either side of Hannibal’s head. 

Hannibal bracketed Will’s hips with his hands to brace him, and with no more warning than that, he caught Will’s cock in his mouth and sucked hard. It occurred to Will, in some distant way, that perhaps Hannibal had intentionally avoided touching him precisely so he could have this. It was a warm thought. 

Biting into the back of his wrist, Will moaned. He was so close. It took every ounce of self-control not to fuck into Hannibal’s throat, and all of it unraveled the moment Hannibal pulled him down and urged him into motion.

“ _ Hannibal _ .” His name ripped from Will’s chest in a growl. It was the only thing he could manage but thankfully Hannibal had never needed much guidance to understand what Will needed. He’d always understood. For all of Will’s ability to deceive and manipulate him, no one had ever been more capable of stripping him so utterly bare. 

He swallowed around Will’s cock and swiped three fingers through the come leaking out of his hole before he pressed inside and curled them with clinical, surgical precision. Will cried out. The sound of it bounced back and curled around them with an unrelenting pressure that sank low into Will’s stomach and coiled between his vertebrae. 

He snapped his hips forward, more brutal than he had intended, but once he started, he couldn’t make himself stop. Hannibal’s mouth was hot and wet and tight around him, and every thrust slammed the head of his cock against the back of Hannibal’s throat. Next time, Will would take him on his knees, and wrench his head back so he could see the bulge of it from the outside. 

_ “ _ Fuck, Hannibal…”

He had enough presence of mind to reach down and tug at Hannibal’s hair in warning, but Hannibal only hummed around him and pressed relentlessly against Will’s prostate. 

Everything in Will tore loose and he came with a sharp cry, spilling down the back of Hannibal’s throat, the edges of his vision turning white. 

Hannibal swallowed all of him down, sucking and tonguing at him until he went soft and his insides felt used and scraped raw. Will finally swatted at him to make him stop. Hannibal withdrew and, just to be a shit, swiped his tongue across Will’s leaking hole before tugging him back down into his lap. 

Will collapsed against him, shivering and oversensitive, and found Hannibal’s hand to lace their fingers together while the waters receded and he trickled back into himself. Hannibal ran his other hand up Will’s back and toyed with the damp ends of his hair while Will caught his breath, nose pressed against Hannibal’s shoulder. He smelled like sweat and sex and the Irish Spring body wash Chiyoh had bought for them at a late-night Wal-Mart. Will was surprised to find that he missed the subtle, complicated layers of Hannibal’s usual soap and aftershave. They’d have to find something more appropriate once they got to wherever they were going. 

He tilted his head and looked up. Hannibal had his face turned towards the muted midday sunlight spilling in through the driver’s side window. His eyes were closed, his lips slightly parted. He looked at ease but pressed this close to him, Will felt an undercurrent of discord still thrumming beneath the temporary satiation. He had the feel of a man who was awaiting the inevitable arrival of something entirely unpleasant.

“You’re still worried I’m going to leave.” It wasn’t a question. There was no point in asking when Will already knew the answer. 

Hannibal opened his eyes but he didn’t look at Will right away. He turned his head and gazed upward. Will had the distinct impression, as he sometimes had when he’d visited Hannibal in the BSHCI, that Hannibal had stepped into his memory palace if only to see something more interesting than the flat, tricot knit fabric of the car’s ceiling. 

“It has been an established pattern between us,” he finally said. There was no anger or accusation in his voice now, not like earlier. It was a simple observation with maybe the slightest hint of resignation.

Will pursed his lips but he resisted the urge to put this conversation away for later. Granted, sitting half-naked on Hannibal’s lap in the passenger seat of their car wasn’t the most ideal place to have it, but that was mostly his fault. He was more evasive than he liked to admit sometimes and he now understood Hannibal’s hesitancy to push him on the matter. 

“I’ve never been good at interpreting my own interiority.” Will ran a finger down the line of Hannibal’s throat and pressed at one of the bruises Will had bitten into his skin. 

Hannibal let out a long, slow breath.  “When did you come upon this revelation?” 

“When did it fully register, do you mean?”

Hannibal nodded once. 

“During your trial.”

Hannibal did look at him then, eyebrows lifting in surprise. Will smiled at him ruefully and shrugged.

“I realized that’s part of the reason I’m so… addicted to you.” He had grappled with that word for a long time, unwilling at first to admit it, and then frightened at the truth of it. Now he almost welcomed the certainty it gave him. “You gave me someplace to put everything where I could sort through the noise until it made sense. I remember when I realized that I was giving that up. I was giving up a lot.”

Hannibal watched him with an expression that was at once unreadable and as vulnerable as Will had seen him since they had stood together on the cliffs. “What makes sense now, Will?”

Will looked up at Hannibal, met his eyes, and held there. “You’re mine. And I’m tired of giving things up.”

Hannibal pulled in a soft, quiet breath, finally open enough to allow for wary, carefully monitored hope. 

“You don’t have to believe me yet,” Will said. “But you will.”

Hannibal swallowed and a muscle in his jaw twitched. “You are very sure of yourself.”

"Yes. I also know you.”

Something unraveled between them, then. Hannibal searched his face and then nodded slowly. It was an agreement as much as it was an acceptance of the time it would take to mend that particular rift, and an acknowledgment of the fact that, between them at least, healing meant scars. It meant jagged lines and rough edges and imperfections and lingering, persistent reminders. A part of Hannibal would probably always cling to Will as if he might, at any given moment, turn to smoke and slip away. A part of Will was always going to crave that. Revel in it, even, and in the power it gave him. 

For the moment, though, Will pushed up onto his elbows and pressed a kiss to Hannibal’s mouth. A promise and an affirmation.  _ I'm here right now. _

By the time they pulled away, the sweat had long since cooled on Will’s skin and despite the gentle warmth of the sun against his side, he half-wished they had done this in a bed where Hannibal would be able to warm him properly. Next time. 

Will smiled crookedly down at him. "Feel better?"

Hannibal brushed Will’s sweat-damp hair away from his face, gentle and maybe a little skeptical still but at least he was again willing to entertain the idea that this could last. Would last. "Immeasurably. Do you?"

“Yeah," he said. Then he shifted experimentally and winced. "I think I might take you up on your offer to drive, though. Not sure I'll be able to sit upright for the next few hours."

He didn't miss the self-satisfied little grin that pulled at the corners of Hannibal's lips, but Will was too relieved at the sight of it to care. God help him, he had missed this arrogant bastard. 

Hannibal thumbed gently at his scarred cheek. "I’d be happy to, darling."

He gave Will one more kiss and then opened the door so Will could climb off of him. Hannibal followed, standing and stretching shamelessly. They cleaned themselves as best they could with the napkins in the center console, set their clothes back to rights, and with a soft kiss pressed to Will's temple, Hannibal circled around the car and slid into the driver’s seat. 

Will settled himself back into the passenger side with a little more care. He tipped the seat back up a little but left it mostly reclined so he could roll onto his hip.

"Will you be okay if I nap?" he asked. A pleasant heaviness was already pulling on his mind and, for the first time in who knew how long, he felt no compunction about giving in to it.

Hannibal nodded and pulled the car around, and headed back towards the highway. “Of course. Get whatever rest you need.”

Will nodded gratefully but he didn't close his eyes right away. He studied Hannibal's profile, stark against the washed-out Texas sky filling the window. He looked lighter and more relaxed now than Will had seen him since before he had fled to Florence. It startled Will a little when he realized he felt that same ease in himself. It was the same way he had felt sometimes in those days and nights before everything had gone wrong. With all the time he had spent lying to Hannibal and making promises to Jack that he knew, deep down, he never intended to keep, Will had been able to grasp at tiny snatches of honesty. He’d tried to hold on to them then, but they had crumbled like ash in his hands and everything else had invariably followed. 

That was no longer the case. Maybe they would never be able to stop running, but Will never felt better than when he was in motion anyway. He reached across the center console and laid his hand on Hannibal’s thigh.

"What are you grinning at?" he asked.

Hannibal glanced at him. He didn’t miss a beat. "I believe that is the first meal I've enjoyed in three years."

Will blinked. Then he threw his head back and laughed. “As long as everything is still intact at the end of it, you’re welcome to that meal any time.”

Hannibal’s grin stretched to show his teeth and he reached down for Will’s hand, twined their fingers together, and squeezed. “That is a promise I am willing to make.” **  
**

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you all for reading and I hope you enjoyed it! This sprouted from a series of texts between a friend and myself in which we were joking about Hannibal having to eat hot dogs from 7-11 (a gas station here in the States) or something along those lines. I figured it would be a fun way to explore these two being the biggest idiots in the whole show.
> 
> All depictions of Texas are taken from my endless childhood memories of road trips I took every other summer with my family. Traffic might be heavier now than it was then XD
> 
> Kudos and comments always appreciated. Y'all are the best.


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